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Help! Weigh your front wheel for me :)

876 Views 5 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  escamillo
My 29" rigid SS bike weighs in at a mighty 26.5#....I think part of it might be the wheels (obviously) I weighed the front wheel in the "ready to ride" state-has a bonty tire and tube, rim strip installed, disk rotor, quick release-the works. As in "ready to put on bike and ride away" and it was right on 2kg....4.4#'s...that sounds pretty weighty for a front wheel but I thought I'd solicit weights of other wheels. These are the older style XT hub (the NON-centerloc hub), avid rotor, 14/15/14 g spokes, velocity dyad rims, velux tape, some tube (?), and the bonty tire.

Thanks for checking :)
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1779g :)

WTB Laserlite disc hub
Velocity Dyad (a selected 506g, my others are 540g, claimed 480g)
Sapim CX-Ray spokes (very light, and flattened for stifness)
Aluminum nipples
Some tube
Bontrager Jones tire
Formula 160mm rotor
Salsa QR

Both my hub and spokes are considered "very light". Hub saves about 105g over yours, spokes about 50g. The rest is in small differences in our Dyads, rimtape, nipples, and tube.
You're not carrying any dead weight in that wheel, this is just what 29" wheels weigh.

Suppose you'd try other wheels or parts for them.
-A Hugi 240 hubset is about 200g lighter (not sure exactly)
-Your spokes are fine, lighter ones often are a comprimize or really $$$
-Alu nipples seems to hold just fine, and save over 40g per wheelset.
-There are some 130g 29" tubes on the market, well worth a try. Yours could be around 180g.
-Bontrager rims are an actual 480g a piece, quite probably saving you 100g for the set.
-For the time being, the Jones tire is the lightest option, and it offers lots of meat at that weight. 560g is like a 500g 26" tire, which is the norm for race tires that don't wreck in their first ride on them.
-New Avid rotors can be really light, older ones not-so-light. My Formula's are on the light side, 113g, some like older Shimano Deore are closer to 150g. Some use ti rotor bolts, or over alternating with alu, but that's the last spare grams even I haven't invested in.
-Thinner tape to replace velox saves a couple dozen grams.
-Some go through the trouble of bolt-on skewers that do save dozens of grams. Can be cheap at times, and clamp well.

I found over a pound in your wheelset, but is that worth it to you? You have a bomber set now. Not that that ever kept ME from getting newer, lighter set...
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1509g

Paul FHub
Sapin CX-ray spokes/polyax nipples
Salsa rim
Conti Vapour tyre and conti tube. Conti rim tape.

P::..
1509...that would save almost 2# (w/rotors)

I should check my rear wheel too because it's the same build-xt/dyads-the single speed hub and freewheel or single speed cassette hub might make a bigger difference than the front hub. I'll try to get it today. 2# of rotating weight might make a race wheelset worth it for me. I guess when it comes down to it, reliability is the most important thing but if I could get a reliable setup and save 2# then I think I would go for that.
Remember that hubs are not really rotating weight, they're just positioned on each end of the bike. You can't save on the heaviest thing, the tire, but there's a bit of room in rim, nipples, rimstrip and tube.
I've been running stan's and king disc's built for a 175 lb rider.

The front weighs in at 739g and the rear at 847g.

These weights are without the skewers, tires (don't worry when their on they're wire beaded), and sealant.

My riding partner has two sets of the Hugi/stans and they weigh in around 1500g and a bit less for the SS set.

I noticed a big difference over my racelites, now if I can only find enought wire beaded nano's to keep me going.

e
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